


Heir, Apparently

by helwolves



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-12
Updated: 2005-07-12
Packaged: 2018-01-04 17:20:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helwolves/pseuds/helwolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So Sirius Black is dead. The remaining residents of Number 12 Grimmauld Place deal with the consequences of magical inheritance laws.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heir, Apparently

**Author's Note:**

> Original author's note from July 12, 2005, a few days before _Half-Blood Prince_ was published:
> 
>  _All right, I had no idea what this was when I started writing, but now I’m absolutely in love with it. Probably more than I should be. Within you’ll find CAPSLOCK!Harry, vague theories on magical inheritance law, Stubby Boardman, more implied slash than actual action, too many Weasleys, and subtle yet gratuitous references that are probably only funny to me. (But feel free to prove me wrong. I’d love to know if anyone catches the nod to_ Wayne’s World 2 _, for instance.) In three days, this will be jossed irrevocably, but I still wanted to get it out there. Last chance to play in this particular sandbox and all that. On that note, I think it’s a little bit about moving on._

So Sirius Black is dead.

Harry is sick of people asking him how he feels. _That’s_ how he feels, thank you very fucking much.

*

“Do you feel anything yet?”

Bill Weasley’s hair is all sorts of disheveled, the long ginger strands making a halo around his head where they’ve come loose from his ponytail. Bill’s been mumbling charms and waving dried nifflers’ toes on strings in front of Harry’s face for what seems like the past _ten thousand hours_.

“NO!” Harry yells, leaping up so abruptly that his heavy wooden chair crashes to the floor. “Nothing! NOT yesterday, NOT this morning, and NOT NOW! Probably NOT EVER, so I wish you’d just —”

Bill cuts him off with a frustrated sigh, long past being affected by Harry’s outbursts, if he ever was. “I don’t understand. The wards should have shifted by now.”

There are lines around Bill’s eyes that Harry could swear weren’t there a few weeks ago.

“Maybe the spell was wrong,” Harry offers.

Ginny shoots Harry a harsh look as she sweeps into the room, setting an assortment of mugs and a still-bubbling kettle on the edge of the table. “It _wasn’t_ wrong.”

“I wrote it all out three times,” says Bill.

“And Mum insisted on reading over the last version, too,” adds Ginny matter-of-factly. “Made sure he crossed all the Ts and dotted all the lowercase Js and everything.” She plunks a mug in front of her brother and fills it with steaming tea.

Harry shrugs, scratches his nose. “I’m going upstairs.”

“But everyone will be home soon, Harry!” Ginny shouts helplessly at his retreating form. “And we’re having — oh, _bugger all_.”

*

“I hate to be the one to say this, but we’ve got to start considering the possibility that it didn’t work.”

“Now, Molly —”

“I’m sorry, Remus, but I just can’t — my children are living in this house, you know, and it may not be safe anymore! How am I supposed to — we just don’t _know_ , do we?”

“Glad _someone_ finally said it.”

“Be quiet, George!”

“But you’ve got a point, Mum. If the house doesn’t belong to Harry, who knows what horrible things it’s going to let come waltzing in here?”

“Too right! Like trolls, or hags —”

“Or vampires —”

“Or manticores —”

“Or werewolves! Er, sorry, Remus —”

“Or lethifolds!”

“Or — or _Lucius Malfoy_!”

“FRED! GEORGE! BACK UPSTAIRS, NOW!”

*

Sometimes Harry sits in the drawing room and stares at the tapestry of the Black family tree.

The elegantly inscribed names, the tangled lines of silver and black. The scorched places, and those he wishes to see scorched. Sometimes he thinks he’d like to see the whole thing go up in flames. Sometimes he stares hard at the dark spot next to _Regulus_ and wonders what the line leading to _godson_ would look like.

But there is no line, and there is no _Sirius_ , and what is a word like _godfather_ supposed to mean to a bloody wizard anyway?

*

“Harry,” says Remus, nodding as Harry slips into the kitchen. 

The boy glances up, only meeting Remus’s eyes for a moment before turning to pluck the kettle from the stovetop. His thin shoulders sag when he realizes it’s empty.

“I put a few bottles of Coke in the icebox,” Remus says to Harry’s back. He carefully folds Moody’s invisibility cloak and drapes it over the back of a chair. “Thought you might want —”

“I’m going to have to go back soon, aren’t I?” Harry says abruptly, still facing away. “If it didn’t work. If this isn’t my — I mean, I’ll have to go —”

The way Harry’s voice catches on the hollows where the word _home_ should be breaks Remus’s heart just a little more.

“Harry,” he sighs, “we’ll _all_ have to go.”

*

“I hate to be the one to say this, but —”

“Oh, just get on with it.”

“Well.” Molly looks at Remus with something nameless and cold in her eyes. “Are we even sure he did his part?”

“He did,” growls Remus. He feels it in his throat, that edge that he didn’t intend for, the taste of grit and blood. He takes a large swallow of tea. It’s a bit weak, too sugary, and still too hot — Ginny strikes again. “It was very important. The most —” Remus stops, shaking his head. “No. He did it.”

“I certainly hope so. It isn’t as if he had anything _better_ to do.”

“Molly,” says Arthur, with a strange cadence. “ _Accio_ paperwork!” he shouts suddenly, holding his arm high.

For a few moments, nothing happens. 

And then the unmistakable rustling of paper builds until a dog-eared issue of _Quidditch Girls: Robes OFF!_ zooms across the kitchen and into Arthur’s hand. He shakes it and several flattened rolls of parchment fall onto the table, unmarked but for Bill’s large, scrawling script.

Remus silently drains his teacup and then smashes it against the wall.

*

Harry doesn’t have many things to pack. He hasn’t been here for very long.

He supposes it was stupid of him to think this would be easy. That when Remus and Kingsley came to take him away from Privet Drive again, it was too good to be true. Just because he keeps hoping for things doesn’t make them true.

 _Stupid_. He should really know that by now.

*

“Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!”

“Honestly, Harry, shouting at her isn’t going to help!”

“SCUM! FILTH!”

“WHAT?”

“I SAID, ‘HONESTLY, HARRY, SHOUTING AT HER ISN’T —’ Oww!”

“Oops, sorry, Hermione!”

“TRAITORS! SLIME!”

“Ron, don’t put those boxes there, someone’s going to —”

“WHAT?”

“Ouch! My toe!”

“PUTRESCENCE!”

“SHUT UP, SHUT UP, _SHUT UP_!”

*

His hair is long and shaggy, dark fringe hanging in his pale blue eyes. His denims are torn and faded, and a week’s worth of mud has caked on the soles of his boots. He stomps out a cigarette on the steps of Number 12 Grimmauld Place and grins.

“Oh,” says Ginny, letting the front door swing open the rest of the way.

“Oh my,” says Mrs. Weasley.

“Umm,” says Harry.

“Hey!” says George.

“Stubby Boardman!” says Fred. “Brilliant!”

“All right?” Regulus Black shifts the strap of his guitar case higher on his shoulder. “I’d been wondering where this place had got off to.”

“Ngk,” says Remus, quietly.

*

Sirius’s brother is moving in. Everyone else is no longer moving out.

Harry and Ron make an informed, democratic decision not to think about anything anymore.

Hermione isn’t quite on board with this, of course, but Ron says that pursuits such as strengthening their alcohol tolerance and perfecting their Exploding Snap skills will likely prove just as useful in the face of the absurdity of life, the universe, and everything as will obsessively rereading _Hogwarts, A History_ or caring for plants with names pronounceable only by people hexed into having an extra tongue or two.

Or rather, he doesn’t say this at all, but Harry knows it’s what Ron means when he shows Harry the bottle of Captain Morrigan’s he nicked from Lupin’s bedroom, and it’s probably also what Harry means when he crushes Ron against the hallway wall and gets his first taste of rum from his best friend’s lips.

*

“So you were, yeah? Shagging my brother?”

“Well,” says Remus, after some moments’ consideration, “sometimes I let him shag me.”

Regulus grins toothily. “Really.”

The glass makes a heavy clunk as Remus sets it back on the table, empty again. “No more Ogden’s,” he announces.

“Jack Daniel’s,” says Regulus, pulling a squarish black bottle from the rucksack near his feet. “Current poison of choice for the wastrels and groupies I left in the glorious hollow land across the sea.”

“Hey?” Remus wonders if he looks as confounded as he feels. His head spins just a bit more.

“Honestly, Lupin, for a professor of Muggle Studies —”

Remus lets out a bark of a laugh. “Not Muggle Studies. Dark Arts.”

“Go on,” Regulus snorts. “What could possibly be dark about _you_?”

Remus finds this _endlessly_ funny. 

Unfazed, Regulus refills both glasses with the amber liquid. It seems to glow like . . . like _magic_ in the moonlight that’s spilling through the bare kitchen window. 

Motionless, they circle.

*

When Regulus remembers how to unstick the tapestry from the drawing room wall, he invites Harry to help him drag it down and toss it into the fireplace.

It burns long and slow, sending off little red sparks and wisps of foul-smelling smoke now and then. Harry swears that he hears someone screaming, but when Mrs. Weasley comes in to drop off a plate of sandwiches, she assures him that Sirius’s — well, and _Regulus’s_ — mum has been silent for hours.

They keep watch from a pile of cushions on the floor nearby. Regulus shows Harry how to play a few chords from The Hobgoblins’ last big hit.

*

“You’re supposed to be dead,” says Remus, finally.

“Yeah, well.”

Remus knows that he is staring, but he can’t quite bring himself to care.

The man looks nothing and everything like Sirius. There’s a thin white scar running along his right temple. He has more than a few grey hairs streaking through the black, and two-week-old scruff for a beard. His cheekbones are less but his lips are more.

“What?” Regulus asks of Remus’s silence.

“I just — I suppose I thought you’d have some sort of witty reply to that,” Remus admits. “I’d have worked one out ahead of time, you see.” He smiles and it feels strange on his face, like his own scars are stretched to breaking.

Guitar strings have left calluses on the fingertips that drag across Remus’s wrist.

“I think you think too much,” says Regulus. 

“Yes,” says Remus. “Well.” 

And then he decides to stop thinking, and to stop talking, and to close his fingers around Regulus’s wrists instead.

**Author's Note:**

>  _One last note (also from 2005): You might recognize_ Quidditch Girls: Robes OFF! _from[Seven Things That Didn't Happen On Valentine's Day At Hogwarts, Or Maybe They Did](http://www.glitterati.talkoncorners.net/fiction/seventhings.php). I think I've read that story so many times that this particular wizarding publication is always the first to come to mind when I try to invent one of my own, so I just went with it. Call it a tribute._


End file.
